Voting Glitch Marks DWTS Season 35 Premiere Elimination

Dancing With the Stars Season 35 began with a technical disruption that marked its two-night premiere, resulting in the first elimination of celebrity Conner Leavitt and his professional partner Adele Zaikman. The incident occurred on September 15, 2026, when a voting glitch forced producers to invalidate all online votes, relying instead on text messages and judges' scores to determine the outcome. During the live broadcast, after the second dance, co-hosts Julianne Hough and Alfonso Ribeiro informed viewers that online voting was down and directed them to vote by text. Leavitt and Zaikman performed their salsa to Tag Team's "Whoomp! There It Is" shortly after, earning a score of 12 out of 30 from the judges. This placed them second from the bottom on the leaderboard, ahead of only Guillermo Rodriguez and Witney Carson, who scored 10 points but advanced. The glitch meant that only valid text votes were counted for the audience portion of the elimination, combined with the judges' scores. Producers stated that the online votes were discarded entirely.